Display problems and major failure

[gasguyr]

I have a 2007 White Mac Book.

A week ago I was using Hand Brake and a terrible message came up that I can't remember. Basically, it said that I needed to reboot my computer--accompanied by a lot of asian characters. Everything was stuck so I did.

Upon rebooting, the LCD panel was completely dark--no color, no faint picture--nothing, completely black. I tried to hook it up with S-video to my TV and the computer worked fine. Going to the control panel to look for display types, listed only my TV as a display and no LCD panel. I tried resetting PRAM and SMC to no avail. I took the unit into the Apple store for help (no Apple Care) whose technician did the same thing to no avail. I told him the whole store about using Handbrake and the crash but he insisted that the events were coincidental and that the hardware on my Mac was to blame. This was deduced because he couldn't see anything on the LCD panel. He said that there would be a faint background image otherwise. He promptly told me I could pay $280+tax and have the units hardware fixed. A replacement cost for a new one is $1000. Being almost 3 years old and not totally needing the laptop now, I decided to sit on it and think about my options. Tonight I decided I'd reformat and see if that helped. I turned the thing on and the LCD monitor worked?! WTF?! Not a hardware problem. I even closed the lid and opened and it worked like normal. Quite freaked out by this I decided to wipe the system clean and start a fresh just in case I picked up some nasty bug from my handbrake DVD episode. And just like that upon restarting, the system had the same problem--black screen. My boot disc that came with it for some reason won't run. Pressing C and rebooting with it in place leads to a handful of ejects. On the one chance that it worked--I got to the reformatting and then it said that my disc was unreadable.

Questions:
1. What is going on, can this be a bad firmware/harddrive/OS problem that is telling my system that the monitor is nonexistent?
2. Do you think the hardware is bad as Apple guy said?
3. Replace or repair if it comes to it?

Many thanks.

 

[Detrius]

This is a hardware problem. Period. Being intermittent doesn't make it not a hardware problem. It could be as simple as the cable coming loose (highly unlikely). Since you said it's *black*, it's probably the logic board. The default color for an LCD is white. Black means the LCD is receiving a signal that tells it to put out black. The fact that the system profiler doesn't see the screen means the graphics chip is completely confused. The fact that sleeping the machine and waking it back up worked fine, but it was the reboot that broke it again also points solidly to the logic board as the problem.

Additionally, you have either a bad install disc or a bad optical drive.


If you can get all of that fixed for $280, you're doing wonderfully. As a third party service provider, the logic board from Apple would cost *us* double or triple that price, and on top of that, we'd be marking it up and have to charge labor.